Humanity Deferred
by ncfan
Summary: Ten members of the Gotei Thirteen, and the issues they have.


Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

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_Soi Fong:_

Soi Fong has spent one hundred years breaking.

Dependent on Yoruichi to live, thrive, even _breathe_, Yoruichi's desertion broke Soi Fong in every way that matters, and in all the ways that don't matter too. It wasn't that she was in love with Yoruichi, at least Soi Fong tries to tell herself that when the dark night comes and all she can think about is her beloved Yoruichi-sama.

Yoruichi was everything to her. Yoruichi was the most important person in Soi Fong's life before she even knew her name, and without her Soi Fong is lost, a ship without sails tossed in a stormy sea.

And her betrayal is galling, an even more acidic brew than the bitter poisons that Soi Fong mixes and drinks to protect her body from any attempted assassination, and far more difficult to swallow. Yoruichi has left her behind, cast her off like garbage, and Soi Fong can't help but feel like garbage too.

If Yoruichi doesn't want her anymore, than that's all she is. Garbage.

But Soi Fong can't accept that. She's had the mentality of a teenager for so long that she still processes things the way a teenager would. And no child has the sort of mind that can resist breaking under such circumstances. Her emotional mentality has wilted, a delicate flower denied water too long, dying, the petals cracked and browned around the edges. Her mental state has withered, fading away like characters in ink on thousand-year-old sheepskin vellum, too light and indistinct to be read.

Without Yoruichi, there is no one to read the faded pages of Soi Fong's heart, and like a book that no one reads, it is closed and locked away in a small, dark and dusty room. Soi Fong stands alone, and she's discovered just how lonely it is at the top.

In the end, Soi Fong has abandonment issues and anger management problems, as diagnosed by Unohana-taicho, but no one needed her to tell them that.

And Yoruichi returning to the wreck of Soi Fong's life isn't enough to make her whole again.

Yoruichi stands with the broken earth churned behind her. She is unwilling to acknowledge that she has created this, as she stares at the sobbing wreck at her feet.

She just wishes that there was some way to tape Soi Fong back together again, after one hundred years of slow breaking.

_Kira Izuru:_

In recent times, Kira Izuru has, by popular vote, been voted the most likely in the Gotei Thirteen to commit suicide. Unfortunately, no one has to guess why, and—though Kira would prefer it otherwise—everyone has borne witness to his destructive displays of depression at least once.

After the events of the Ryoka invasion and Ichimaru Gin, Aizen Sousuke and Tousen Kaname's defection from Soul Society to Hueco Mundo, Unohana-taicho declared that everyone—yes, _everyone_—in the Third, Fifth and Ninth divisions would submit to psychological evaluations. The lieutenants of said divisions would be evaluated by Unohana herself.

The evaluation was…touchy, to say the least. Unohana-taicho succinctly apologized beforehand for what she was going to have to do, before, in that bizarrely calm, mothering, _intimidating_ way of hers, utterly tearing into Kira about every last sensation, dream, obsession and _breath_ he had taken since Gin had left.

Kira had left feeling like he was a bath rag that had been wrung out until the patterns were cracking, with Unohana-taicho's soft voice ringing after him.

"_If you ever feel the need to talk, please come to me."_

Nodding absently and saying he would, Kira silently promised himself that he would _never_ go to Unohana to talk, no matter how desperate he was. It was all he could do to stumble out of her office, blank-eyed and weak-limbed, making no attempts to hide it despite the fact that Kira knew it would only serve to cement the opinions of most everyone around him, that he was starting to go off the deep end.

In the weeks afterwards, Kira silently withdrew into the office, hardly ever leaving, filling out paperwork like a machine. Sign this. Stamp that. Reject this, ball it up and throw it in the waste basket across the room. The little paper balls piled up until there was a veritable mountain in Kira's office, of little papers that reflected everything that he refused to acknowledge.

That is, until Renji and Shuuhei got it into their heads that they needed to cheer Kira up. And that the setting of a bar and multiple casks of sake was required to do it.

Kira personally didn't see why they all had to get drunk in groups. He could do it quite well by himself, thank you, and if he got drunk by himself at least he wouldn't have Rangiku giving him so much that he passed out. Then again, he could pass out just fine all by himself too.

But Renji and Shuuhei insisted that they didn't want to see Kira wilt away in his sunlit office, and Kira couldn't help but appreciate that they cared.

Shuuhei, for whatever reason, has recently gotten it in his head and decided to give Kira tips on how to pick up women.

Kira has, oddly enough, experienced much more success with this than Shuuhei. Kira has since had six one-night stands in a period of three months. He can't remember the fine details of three of them. He doesn't get alarmed about that, though, until he wakes up next to a woman with a head full of long golden hair, recognizes her, and has no idea how he got there.

Rangiku is far more understanding about Kira's panicked, apologetic blubbering than Hitsugaya is as he chases him out of the Tenth division headquarters, pelting him with his clothes as he goes.

_Unohana Retsu:_

There is paint on Unohana's face. The shades are as follows: serenity, peacefulness, motherliness, competence and stoicism. There is paint, but it is over an empty mask that hides Unohana's true nature from everyone who might care.

The truth is, Unohana Retsu is a deeply violent woman.

Few know this for certain, though virtually everyone suspects it, whether consciously or not. The only people that know for certain that Unohana is so violent are all dead, so they're certainly not talking. Unohana counts on that; dead men tell no tales, after all.

As a child, she was violent, unpredictable, untamable; a virtual hell demon, as the household servants would call her. Yamamoto sighed and shook his head as Unohana—when she was still just young Retsu—came up with yet another torn skirt hem, yet another dead frog in her hands after she tried to hold the delicate little tree frog and accidentally squeezed too tightly, and would ask his young daughter if she ever intended to be gentle.

Unohana can still remember the frogs. They were light green and tiny, their skins soft, smooth and slightly slimy. Their eyes stared up at her accusingly as she accidentally killed them, one by one.

In a way, this façade of Unohana's is a sort of apology to all the dead frogs still buried in the backyard.

_Hinamori Momo:_

The same group that voted Kira the most likely to take his own life via self-evisceration has voted Hinamori most likely out of the Gotei Thirteen to snap and suddenly become ax-crazy. It is the first time in fifteen years that Soi Fong has not held that dubious honor.

Hinamori is going through a breaking period very similar to that which Soi Fong experienced after Yoruichi's desertion, but different. It is sad in how it's similar, and, to all who have to witness it, genuinely frightening in the differences and unique qualities Hinamori's breaking displays.

No one knows just how far things went with Aizen, how far Hinamori fell under his spell and how deep and dark the crack that bound her to him went, but Hitsugaya is just finding out. Finding out that Hinamori's relationship with her Aizen-taicho was anything but wholesome. Despite being in love with her almost to distraction, he hasn't looked at her in the same way since.

Unohana, as promised, performed Hinamori's psychological evaluation herself. The door to Unohana-taicho's office was shut and locked for three hours, as was her window.

When the door opened and Hinamori filed out, she clutched a small piece of paper in her hand. Unohana stood in the threshold of the door. Her face was strangely drawn and pale.

No one knows what went on behind that closed door. But everyone knows that Unohana has had Hinamori on anti-psychotics ever since.

_Hisagi Shuuhei:_

Out of all of the betrayed lieutenants, Shuuhei is the best-adjusted, Shuuhei is the one who handles his feelings of betrayal best and Shuuhei is healing in the quickest possible fashion. There is nothing wrong with him.

At least, that is what Unohana-taicho tells him during his psychological evaluation, with a soft smile on her face, as she tells him that he can leave.

Shuuhei isn't happy with that. _But you're wrong_, Shuuhei wants to tell her. _There is something wrong._ He wants to scream it from the rooftops of Seireitei until someone hears him, until he can get someone to listen to him, and he can get someone who is willing to talk to him about it.

But Unohana sends him out with a clean bill of health, and there's nothing Shuuhei can do about it.

Everyone's telling Shuuhei he's fine. Everyone's telling him he should be glad that he didn't end up like Kira or Hinamori, too broken to move, and that he's taking his mental health for granted. There isn't anyone who can see what is plain to Shuuhei as the sun rising in the east. There is something wrong with him, deeply.

The fact that Shuuhei's pain doesn't present so destructively as Kira's and Hinamori's doesn't make it any less real. Weeks afterward, the truth is still sinking in and Shuuhei still has an invisible wound that's gaping and causing him pain, keeping him from sleeping at night and driving him to the bottle with increasing, alarming frequency.

Shuuhei can't understand why Tousen-taicho has left him behind. He can't understand what has drawn Tousen to the allure of darkness, what has made him betray Soul Society and turn traitor on everything that Shuuhei—everything that _Tousen_ has ever valued and held dear.

Shuuhei just supposes he was never good enough to know his captain's heart.

He does not collapse into himself like Hinamori does, and he doesn't bury himself with paperwork like Kira. Instead, Shuuhei focuses his time and energy into training. Training to learn bankai. Training to become stronger. Training to be captain.

When Shuuhei is captain, he tells himself, he'll be able to show Tousen-taicho that he was wrong, and maybe show him that all along the right path is the one he abandoned when he fled with Aizen.

It doesn't occur to Shuuhei that Tousen is blind, in more than just sight, and that the blind can not see the path laid down in front of their feet.

_Matsumoto Rangiku:_

Rangiku tells herself that when she sees Gin again, she's going to give him a black eye and a fat lip.

But in truth, she's not sure what she's going to do if she ever sees Gin again.

It was like a sucker punch, though in retrospect Rangiku can tell herself that she should have seen it coming. Gin was always so strange, seemed one step away from losing it entirely, and Rangiku curses every time she thinks that she was such a fool to have never saw that. It wasn't like Gin hid his instabilities; he'd made it plain as day and scared the bejesus out of nearly everyone he knew.

Angry and burned, Rangiku wasn't sure how she was supposed to heal from what had been done to her, if she would ever forget or ever stop being angry. She wasn't sure she ever would be. Anger was a fire burning deep in her chest and she wasn't sure where the hose was to get rid of it, or if she even wanted to. Rangiku momentarily considered pretending to be from the Third, Fifth or Ninth division so she could get set up for a psychological evaluation. She wasn't sure she didn't need it.

Rangiku supposed the only thing to do was try to get her revenge on Gin anyway she could. Sleeping with his lieutenant was a good way to start.

As she wakes up in the early morning, Rangiku finds her night robe and pulls it on, as she goes to sit in front of her mirror, running a comb through her heavily tousled hair.

Rangiku's ice blue eyes turn on Kira. He's passed out on her bed (he was hitting the sake the night before much more heavily than she was), mid-morning sunlight pouring in through the window and hitting his pale, lean body, half-covered by the sheets. There are deep black circles under his eyes that she just now notices in the morning. His face is blanched and strained, and Rangiku's face softens in sympathy, because she can see that Gin's betrayal has hurt him as much as it has hers.

But somehow, it makes sense that Kira should fill up the part in her life that Gin used to have.

Rangiku sighs as she sits down on the bed and stares at the two kimonos lying on the floor. She and Kira are the same height, and he's such a slightly built man that he isn't any bigger than her (unless Rangiku's very much mistaken, Kira actually weighs a couple of pounds less than her, but it's forgivable considering how very skinny Kira is), and the kimonos are unisexual, so without close inspection, it's going to be hard to tell whose is whose.

Frowning, Rangiku picks up the kimono nearest her. She notices a smell coming up, and holds it to her nose, inhaling deeply.

Incense, which definitely makes it Kira's. But…

It's the same incense Gin burned in his room.

A small groan greets Rangiku's ears as Kira's bloodshot eyes open. They're unfocused, and he doesn't seem to know where he is. Then, his pale blue eyes meet hers.

"Matsumoto-san?"

Rangiku giggles teasingly as she realizes that Kira has absolutely no recollection of last night. "Good morning, Kira."

_Zaraki Kenpachi:_

The world is soaked in blood and gore, a tapestry of violence, and Kenpachi is the weaver who sows the gory threads together, the sinews binding together to form a stinking, warped tapestry of what life should be, from the eyes of the Eleventh division.

Kenpachi was born tasting blood in his mouth, hard and iron. At least, he thinks he was.

In fact, his earliest memories, both of life on Earth and life in Rukongai involve blood splattering the ground, except in Rukongai, there's blood on the dull, battered edge of Kenpachi's sword and he's licking it off with relish, his eyes gleaming as they taunt the dying man in front of him.

Kenpachi maims but doesn't kill, so he can taste that thrill again, feel the bloodlust coursing through his veins, and know that he's truly alive.

The Eleventh division reflects the bloody life story that Kenpachi has taken together and woven into a guide to life. No one balks from a fight, no one fears injury, and no one fears death.

Kenpachi himself does not fear death but rather welcomes it. He revels in the death of small things and waits with bated breath for the day when someone will finally come, someone strong enough to take his life, and give him that final thrill.

_Kurotsuchi Mayuri:_

Kurotsuchi Mayuri has a love for experimentation that goes beyond what is normal and sane, beyond what is acceptable, beyond the bounds of morality and social acceptability. Mayuri is, in short, the most psychopathic, sociopathic, sadistic man to ever bear the white haori of a Shinigami captain. The whole reason Aizen ostensibly holds this dubious honor instead is that Mayuri, while he has a definite flair for the dramatic, prefers comfortable anonymity. If he starts beating his daughter in public and making comments about live test subjects where others can hear, an uncomfortable amount of attention will start to be paid to the inner workings of the Twelfth division.

The Twelfth division is a place where secrets are swallowed up and never seen nor heard from again. Mayuri prefers to keep it that way.

To this day, Mayuri isn't sure what possessed him to create Nemu. He wanted a woman who would fit his needs perfectly in _every_ way, the lieutenant who would follow his every order without question, no matter how bizarre or outrageous. He could have simply picked a woman out of his division and altered her in some way (_Maybe a lobotomy would be best_, Mayuri muses one night, pen scratching against paper) if he'd wanted a servant so badly.

But instead, he has Nemu. Maybe it's because altering one of his subordinates would have caused a fuss, but it's more likely because Mayuri wanted something that could be his and his alone. His lieutenant. His child. His creature. His property.

There is an issue with sexual gratification. When Mayuri was first admitted into the Maggot's Nest so many centuries ago, he was castrated. Mayuri isn't sure why or to what end, but he was. The only reason Mayuri hasn't since replaced his male member is because he's managed to convince himself that he's better off without it. However, it does necessitate the need to get creative when getting his gratification out of Nemu.

Ah, well. Mayuri takes it in stride; at least she'll never get pregnant off of anything he does to her.

Unlike Soi Fong, Kira, Hinamori and Shuuhei, Mayuri isn't even slightly hurt by Kisuke's desertion of Soul Society. In fact, if Mayuri were to ever see Kisuke again, he'd thank him for leaving when he had. Mayuri was just starting to, in earnest develop an interest in studying specimens from the Quincy race, and he knew that Kisuke would never allow him to take live subjects, if Kisuke's old tales of a Quincy drinking buddy he'd had before the war was any indication. Mayuri was just starting the preparations required to set up a clandestine lab in Rukongai when news came down of Kisuke's treachery and desertion. It was almost enough to have Mayuri singing hallelujahs from the rooftops.

A wave of frustration comes down on Mayuri when he realizes that the old man on his lab table is probably the last Quincy left. So many test subjects, all the way down to the last one, and not a single one knew or had even expressed knowledge of Ransoutengai. Ishida Soken found out to his cost what it was like to be the one Mayuri took his frustrations out on. He had Nemu's sympathy, but everyone else in the division spent the first few days after Soken's death just trying to keep out of an irate Mayuri's way.

So, imagine Mayuri's elation when he discovers seven or eight years later that his last subject has been so kind as to leave behind a living student and descendant, and one that can use Ransoutengai to top it all off. Said student—Ishida Uryuu; Mayuri can finally remember the kid's name—wants nothing more than to kill him, but Mayuri isn't too worried; it's not as if a Quincy whelp like that scrawny boy can do him any lasting harm.

Mayuri snickers. _A little dragon, indeed._

Yes, the boy will make a very interesting test subject when that day comes. And the only reason Mayuri comes to Uryuu and Renji's rescue in Hueco Mundo is because his investment is being threatened. Mayuri's not done with Uryuu yet.

_Kurotsuchi Nemu:_

Dependent on Mayuri in every way, if he was to tell Nemu to stop breathing, she would ask him for how long or if he preferred that she asphyxiate herself. If Mayuri was to order Nemu to commit seppuku, she would ask him how long he wanted the cut and how low on her belly, and how many pints of blood he wanted splattered on the floor, and then would proceed to make damn sure she didn't bleed any more or less than Mayuri wanted her to.

It's a testament to how Mayuri made her that Nemu's ivory skin shows no scars as the result of his almost daily treatment of him. Mayuri designed her skin to have no flaws and to regenerate more superficial surface wounds with alarming speed. If Nemu were to take a kitchen knife and slice open the upper layer of epidermal tissue on one of her fingers. The skin would heal itself and close up again before her very eyes, within seconds. Unfortunately, she is not so fortunate when it comes to strikes from her "father's" zanpakuto.

There have been to date ten assassination attempts on Kurotsuchi Mayuri since he took office as captain of the Twelfth division. Out of all of them Ishida Uryuu has come closest to succeeding, and was the only one who managed to force Mayuri to go liquid. When Renji tells Uryuu all of this, and adds the fact that his name has been spoken of with reverence by Twelfth division members ever since (most of the members of the Twelfth division, with the exception of Nemu, either despise or live in awed fear of their captain), Uryuu stares at him for a moment then bursts out laughing, genuinely laughing for the first time in years, but that's beside the point.

The night a fifteen-year-old Quincy nearly kills a Shinigami captain is the night Nemu, for the first time, deliberately does something that she knows is not what her father wants.

Nemu knows that Mayuri would very much prefer to see Uryuu strapped to one of his tables deep down in the bowels of the division headquarters. He sees value in the boy as a test subject, and he doesn't want him to get away. What Nemu knows Mayuri _doesn't_ want is for his quarry to get away.

By giving Uryuu the antidote to the poison racing through his veins, Nemu does something that she knows may warrant punishment from Mayuri, but for the first time in her life, she simply doesn't give a damn. She doesn't care, and that scares Nemu just a little bit.

She tells herself that that's the end of it, and can't for the life of her understand why she continues to think of the boy with such a painful jolt in her chest for weeks, months afterwards. Nemu can't understand why it was so agonizing to remember the noxious cocktail of emotions on his face: rage and despair and hatred and pity for her and no one else.

Nemu just wants to know why it hurt so much.

_Ukitake Juushiro:_

Juushiro isn't afraid to admit that his life hasn't exactly been a cakewalk, but he'd also like to point out that he is remarkably well-adjusted for someone who had been very slowly dying over the course of nineteen hundred years.

Once a year, Juushiro takes the time to update his will. He sees that provisions are left for the care of his younger siblings and that there is a decent enough amount of money left in savings to finance the running of the family estate in the event of his death. Certain belongings are left to Shunsui, members of the Thirteenth, Hitsugaya and others.

There is so much that Juushiro wants to do but can't because he is bound by one foot to his bed, by his illness. Out of every member of the Gotei Thirteen, including Zaraki Kenpachi, Juushiro has been put on enforced medical leave most often; exactly one thousand, eight hundred and thirty-three times, to be exact. And every single time, whether Shunsui is there to keep him company or not, Juushiro stares up at the ceiling and wishes his lungs hadn't betrayed him as a child.

But that's alright. As slowly as Juushiro is dying, he knows he still, barring fatal injury, still has plenty of time to do some of those things he always dreamed of. But some dreams just have to slip away, fading away like morning dew in the sun. For every strand of his snow-white hair, there is a dream Juushiro has lost.

And as Juushiro watches the sun rise from the window, lying prostrate on his low bed, he wonders if another new day marks a dream preserved or a dream lost.

Sentarou and Kiyone are knocking at the door; Juushiro feels well enough to rise today, and he will go and make the rounds of the Thirteenth division headquarters, and then maybe go and spend some time with Shunsui, before having a chat with Yamamoto.

Juushiro values life.

And Juushiro understands, better than anyone else, how abruptly life can end.


End file.
